In a perfect world, you’d have the perfect IT infrastructure for your business from day one. You would never have to worry about having enough computing, networking, and storage capabilities, no matter how big your business gets, because it would all be there.
Of course, we don’t live in a perfect world, and most businesses don’t have the resources — never mind the insights — to develop the perfect infrastructure from the start. As a result, most create a data center based on their immediate needs, with some room to grow. The problem? In many cases, that room to grow gets used up fairly quickly, and it’s only when the business starts running out of storage or productivity suffers that the IT team realizes it’s time to act and add more capacity.
When developing any business infrastructure, whether for a small business with 10 employees or a major enterprise with thousands, scalability is a primary concern. In the simplest terms, IT scalability is the ability of the company’s computer resources to meet the needs of a growing number of users or customers, and the capacity for growth. There are some challenges to scalability, though, but thankfully, most of them can be overcome simply by colocating in a data center.
Challenges of Scalability
For many businesses, successfully managing scalability comes down to two main factors: Performance and cost. Those that attempt to develop their own in-house data centers often run into one of two challenges:
1. Underbuilding. In an attempt to save money in the short term, any businesses under-build their data centers. While the center may meet the businesses needs in the short term, eventually it becomes inadequate, forcing the business to then invest more capital in expanding capacity. Often, these new investments come in the form of patchwork or stopgap measures. A new piece of equipment here or there can solve some problems, but eventually that mix-and-match approach can become unmanageable. Some experts compare it to an older home where the owners attempt to add new — and more — appliances over the years. While it might be possible to make some things work some of the time, eventually the new demands will overwhelm the original electrical system, leading to costly repairs and replacements.
2. Overbuilding. On the flip side, some businesses try to plan by building far more capacity than necessary. While this provides some peace of mind that there will be enough capacity for the storage, computing and networking needs of the company regardless of growth, it also has to potential to lead to wasted money. Not only do you waste necessary resources on technology that isn’t being used, there’s also a chance that the technology that you purchase now could be obsolete by the time you make use of it, thus leading to additional expenditures on upgrades or replacements.
Clearly, purchasing equipment that goes unused or setting up an inadequate system isn’t ideal. Colocation, therefore, is a good solution for many businesses.
Why Data Centers Improve Scalability
By some estimates, the amount of capacity needed by the typical business could increase by as much as 750 percent in the next few years, due to factors like the Internet of Things, the continued increase in mobile computing, and big data.
Because most businesses don’t have working crystal balls, it’s impossible to know exactly how much capacity will be needed for an individual enterprise. That’s what makes data center colocation so attractive: Instead of attempting to plan for the unknown, businesses can contract on a “pay as you grow” basis, purchasing only what they need in terms of space, bandwidth, and capacity. Such an arrangement has multiple advantages:
1. Equipment isn’t sitting idle and wasting your money.
2. Changes to scale happen quickly and efficiently. Should you need to increase – or decrease – capacity, it can be handled in a matter of days, instead of weeks or months, without costly capital expenditures.
3. Cost savings. Proponents of data centers point out that switching to a colocation model allows business owners to reallocate costs and shift capital expenditures to operating expenses. Instead of investing in the construction and development of an in-house data center, which are notoriously expensive, your company can earmark those funds for other purposes. Colocation also allows for a fixed monthly expenditure, which isn’t always possible with an in-house data center. Not to mention, large data centers can achieve an economy of scale that wouldn’t otherwise be possible, allowing for lower energy and security costs – something all businesses can benefit from.
Colocating in a data center helps businesses improve their scalability to allow for seamless growth over time. It helps prevent costly downtime, expensive upgrades, and improves security. For those reasons alone, it only makes sense to explore colocation as a solution for your IT infrastructure.
from Darlene Milligan http://ift.tt/1KnPUkW via transformational marketing
from Tumblr http://ift.tt/1MRqGfd
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